


No one's dreams

by veyl



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamscapes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, McHanzo Reverse Bang 2018, Memory Loss, magic bullshit would be more accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-01 11:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15772773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veyl/pseuds/veyl
Summary: It is a locked room somewhere in the middle (of Watchpoint residential hall). A chipped cup from the back (of the kitchen cabinet). It's Jesse looking for a heavy-weight flicker in the corner (of his eye, on his shoulder), a whistling machine in-between (the branches of sweet summer fruits), a flash of time and thought on top (of a shelf inside the laundry room).It is a soft scent on the edge (of a pen-touched page), a name at the bottom (of past month's mission roster), and a faded photograph outside (of its broken glass frame).It is a wandering soul inside the twilightand a lonely lover at the top (of a sun touched hill).He closes his eyes.And he wakes.





	No one's dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this to go with [quixoticprince's](https://quixoticprince.tumblr.com/) beautiful art was a delight. 
> 
> Thank you to the organisers for holding the event!

Sometimes people just disappear. There’s no rhyme or reason to it; they simply forget themselves and are forgot. Suddenly there is an extra mug in the cupboard that no one drinks from and an empty seat at breakfast that seems strange, and things littering the floor of a room that belongs to no one.

It’s quiet in this room. 

It is a locked room somewhere in the middle (of Watchpoint residential hall). Ah, yes, the Watchpoint. That must be where he is. He, the blind piece of thought in the breath of pre-dawn and the shiver of sunrise on the white sheets, and the flutter of wings and passing birdsong. 

He slips into consciousness; slowly like breaking through the surface of water, and quickly like the roar of a wave. But there is no water in this room dry with dust, only fickle thoughts and forgotten things. And the windows are shut and the air stands still, and the dust sits undisturbed; it’s been days or perhaps weeks since sound broke through the silence; it’s quiet in this room.

He feels as if he’s been asleep for a long, long time; he stretches his limbs and the room seems to yawn and stretch with him. He looks around and he does not understand; this familiar fleeting feeling on the tip of his tongue or his own flickering form fading within the summer light. He is simply there, when just a moment ago he surely was not, and he feels disoriented in the small space he is suddenly occupying: 

What... what is this?

He steps forward and feels himself flickering in alarm; he cannot feel the bone-heavy weight pulling at his form or the warmth where the gentle light reaches to caress his skin. The space around him fills him up and forms him, but he cannot feel its texture and its touch, the temperature or the dust-scent or indeed any of its other enchantments. He is a transparent, ghost-like creature in the dull grey: both there and not, and he does not quite think of himself as anything. When finally he does find his own reflection in the glass, he does not recognize it.

Then there is noise just outside the door, dancing and changing, calling and growing; he listens intently as the room sings along and he might fall through the floorboards if he is not careful, melt slowly into the low hum of static, and disappear into the artificial light in the next room over. And how is it, in fact, that he can pass through the wall? He does it almost as an afterthought.

He should not be able to do that it feels like, but he does not question it. Perhaps he is dead. Perhaps he has just forgotten himself. In any case the door is locked, and whatever is calling to him is not inside the quiet room but outside it.

“Hello?”

He turns around, looking for the voice in the middle of the hallway. It starts off soft and not-quite-there, until the lights above him flicker and then there they are: an armored person or an omnic, or indeed both. They seem to observe him with some level of curiosity, though the exact emotion perhaps is lost with the synthetic muscle and polished steel and a face hidden behind a mask. When they speak their voice sounds strangely filtered, tone light but catching on the edges of words spoken in a language not their own, and they ask him: “Can I help you?”

He takes in a breath and says, “I’m not sure.”

“Are you lost?” they ask, the green light on their mask dimming just slightly. 

“That- yes, I believe so.”

“Well, let me just put this away,” they say, and now he can see a bow and a quiver of arrows they are carrying. The creature lifts it slightly and then wavers, tilting their head to the side. “Oh what was I- for some reason I thought to bring it here, but this is not the storage room.”

“You are storing it away? Why?”

“No one around here can really use it,” they tell him with a small shrug. “I mean, I used to. But this bow is not like mine was.” 

“I had a bow,” he says and knows it to be true. There is something achingly familiar about such a fine weapon. After a thought he holds out a hand: “May I have a look?” They seem to hesitate for a moment, then pass him the bow with another little shrug. “Have you any skill?” He blinks as he examines the bow and says, “I- yes, actually. I trained since young age.”

The hallway stretches ahead, a hundred years wide, a thousand years long; a breath in time and a line in a song. They do not notice, they are looking straight at him, green light flickering in his peripheral vision. He slows his step, looking ahead, lifts the bow and draws back the string. There is noise in his ears. His brother says something that he does not hear. He has no arrow nocked, nothing to let fly when he releases the string; when he lets go, thunder booms overhead. He is standing in the middle of a storm, rain pulling at his clothes, beating hard against his face, and over his eyes. The sky is broken open above, letting streaks of sunlight pass through the grey. And there is blue. Pale, ghostly blue that drowns him.

He closes his eyes.

And he wakes.

 

There is no more rain.

Instead sunlight streaks through a single wide window and he is inside, seated at a kitchen table. In front of him is a tea set of mismatched items. The cup in front of him is decorated with bright flowers: a chipped cup from the back (of the kitchen cabinet). He remembers, as the scent of tea fills up his nostrils and makes him feel warm inside, something like home.

“Best drink it hot.”

Across from him sits a woman dressed in blue, instructing him with a pointed look of her one eye and a sharp turn of her lips. She sips lightly from her own cup: a bit of a more elegant design, a single golden stripe just below its rim. She says, “So many people, so many slippery fingers, you understand.”

He looks to his chipped cup. He found it pushed in far behind the rest of the mismatched set and immediately claimed it as his own. He finds he does that a lot with broken, discarded things. Things that are yet useful, but ugly and unwanted.

But then none of the set matches either. It is a scavenged treasure, yet a small piece of what remains. Even its little chipped cup found its place here, did it not?

The tea she prepared tastes bitter, just the way he likes it, though she does not serve the cake he likes to have with it. No, this is not a social call. It is brief conversation; one late afternoon in-between the hard lines and the swift precision; it is the slowness, unburdened by words or the stillness of a sniper’s nest.

“It’s been sitting idle, waiting for you,” she tells him. She understands. More than he thought she would. More than he thought she would want to. He doesn’t know how long he’s been gone, but perhaps she can tell him. He opens his mouth to ask but instead he tells her this:

“In Japan we have an art form called kintsukuroi. It means to repair things with gold or silver, so they become more beautiful for having been broken.”

“Ah,” she says and laughs lightly. “Is that how you repurposed your scarf then?”

He blinks. So easily the strangeness slips from porcelain to silk. Did he ever possess such a thing? Did he give it away? But a scarf is only that, what good can a piece of cloth do? He cannot think what she might mean by it.

She must see the confusion on his face for she only laughs again.

“Drink your tea,” she says. He does so.

It is cold.

 

Jesse hits the bullseye with all six of his shots and grins, satisfied, looking over completely on instinct as if expecting someone who is always there

a heavy-weight flicker in the corner (of his eye, on his shoulder)

but there is no one.

He must imagine the voice in the back of his skull, laughing at Jesse before admitting they are somewhat impressed. He must imagine the targets riddled with wounds other than bullet holes, or the training bots whirring past and falling like flies taken by storm. That is not so much his style, not the desert hot and rough like sand but fast and fluid like water and an electric taste inside his mouth. Jesse frowns, shakes his head a bit and brings up a hand to rub at his chin. How very strange.

He puts down his gun and takes off his glove almost absently, now reaching up again to touch his fingers over a soft silken fabric wrapped around his left upper arm. It always calms him through the waves carrying anxiety tough he cannot think why, it’s just something he picked up once after all, like a lucky charm that found its way to him by chance.

And yet.

There is that cold prickling feeling at the back of his neck and Jesse could swear someone is watching him. There is nothing still in his peripheral vision except the flickering of the artificial lights and if he looks too long he’ll start feeling dizzy. So he turns his head to check his six, looks to the left then turns his head to the right

and clenches his jaw as his heart jumps up his chest, into his throat. It flutters and fights, as if it would like nothing better than to escape and splatter on the floor. The man looks to Jesse with dark eyes; a little regarding, a little confused, as if he is not quite sure what to make of Jesse or indeed what he himself is doing here.

“Didn’t see you there, partner,” Jesse manages once his heart has ceased in its attempts to take flight: instead it quivers and whistles a harsh tune inside his chest. Jesse says, “Awful unwise to sneak up on a man holding a gun.”

“You are not holding your gun,” the man tells Jesse pointedly. Indeed when Jesse checks, his fingers are clenched around the edge of the golden fabric, rather than the grip of his gun. He lets go of it now, and carefully lowers his arm back to his side.

“You new around here?” he asks, trying and likely failing to keep from grimacing; he is so very tired and he’s not even sure why. The man looks a bit confused again, then alarmed, then says simply: “I don’t know. I do not think so.”

A beat in his heart’s song. Jesse’s mouth feels entirely dry.

“Come again?”

“This place is familiar,” says the man. “The people and the halls. But you do not know me.”

“’fraid I don’t, no.”

The man seems to deflate at that, shoulders slumping and head hanging low. “I do not know me either.”

The shooting range does not so much shake as it shifts, slowly at first, almost unnoticeably so; the walls seem to pulsate and grow, taller and taller as they change into stone. A breeze rushes past, carrying with it the taste of salt, the perfume of the sea. Waves crash and break under the tiled floor, urging Jesse to remember a night overlooking the vast body of water and smoky liquor whispering promises on his tongue. His- his golden scarf as it wraps around Jesse’s arm, just under his shoulder, and clever fingers pulling him down, down, down-

There is a strange man leaning on the railing beside him. Starlight seems to fill him up, dancing through the ghostly form. Jesse rubs his right eye with the palm of his hand and says, “This is yours, is this your scarf?”

“I believe so,” says the man. “Or it was, once.” He extends his arm, fingers catching briefly on Jesse’s shoulder, over the gold, before passing right on through.

“You’re not really here, are you?”

The man just shrugs. He takes his hand back and grips the railing just fine.

“I don’t know what I am.”

Jesse says, “I don’t believe in ghosts.” Is it a dream? They often make little sense. But what a feeling this dream carries, what false memories: the sort of which, he thinks, will make him look over his shoulder even when he is awake; the sort of which, he knows, bring with them a phantom ache. It is a dream, then, of something lost that was never there. And the man says nothing, so Jesse opens his mouth again, words tripping over his tongue: “Why give it to me?”

There is a little furrow between the other man’s brows, as if he too is struggling to remember. Finally he says, “It was a gift. You gave me something too.” He looks over his person as if he expects to find it then, but there is nothing so obvious that Jesse recognizes. The man looks up at Jesse and Jesse leans in, frozen as the man whispers soft over his cheek:

“Find me when you wake up.”

In the morning when the dream fades and he is getting ready for the day ahead, Jesse opens a desk drawer in search of a spare case of bullets. There, nestled in-between the case and a leather journal like a misplaced memory, he finds a golden piece of fabric that’s not his.

 

Further down the hall, he is back inside that room. His room, with its fine new additions: a bow leaning against the bedframe, a chipped cup on the nightstand. He half-expects the golden scarf, but if once it belonged here it does not any longer. Gone. Gifted.

The day inside the room is bright, like a summer day he remembers: he lies on the floor like he was lying on the grass, short and rough and irritating his skin, and he stares at the ceiling like he was staring at the blue sky and the clouds passing by. He imagines the birdsong and the clouds in the coffee and the short, rough beard itching his skin; then indeed there is a whistle, quick and bird-like, startling him from the memory. He lifts his head

he is back inside that room but also he is not: there is dirt under his fingernails and sunlight in his hair. There is dirt on the floor as well; he must have tracked it in after helping tend to Bastion’s garden.

He looks: the ceiling, open to the sky; the walls, collapsing under heavy branches; and he lifts himself from the floor, cracked in places to let through the grassgreen rug. He hears more than sees, small and buzzing past him, bees; up towards the sunlight-shapes, up to taste the sweet peach juice and the apple cake. The lock on the door opens to let through an omnic with a bird on their shoulder, cradling in their dirt-caked metal hands a little potted plant. He watches wide-eyed as the omnic places the plant on the desk, then beeps and boops and twirls around once: a whistling machine in-between (the branches of sweet summer fruits).

Of course. Bastion.

“I was just thinking about you.”

The omnic lets out a series of inquisitive beeps. To his surprise and delight, he finds he can understand them; the question, however, makes him shrug a little helplessly.

w h o are y o u?

“I don’t know.”

The omnic tilts his head to the side. The little bird lifts from its shoulder and flies to the branch above them, chirping thrice before settling to silence.

w h y here?

“Is this, I thought, is this not my room?”

t h i s room n o t belong t o anyone

“How can that be? There are things in here that must belong to someone.”

t h i s room h a s no,

The omnic pauses, looks around as if confused, then lets out a distressed beep.

h a s no?

“You brought that,” he says, motioning towards the potted plant, “for someone, correct?”

y e s. a friend, Bastion says, and seems to laugh with glee. It points to the second drawer in the desk.

With that being his one and only instruction, he goes over to open the drawer. He’s not sure what to expect until he peeks inside and then he thinks, oh. He reaches in and pulls out a bundle of photographs: there is the omnic and the woman with the teaset and the man with the golden scarf and the strange person with flickering green lights-

and so many others. And someone he thinks might be him.

“When were these taken?” he asks aloud. There is no answer. When he looks the omnic and the bird are gone. He looks over the photographs, turns them over in search for any clues or dates. There are none. But these people must be dear to him if he keeps printed photographs of them. 

If only he could remember them. 

He frowns. 

If only they had not forgotten him. 

His lip twitches and his eyes sting, and the first tear that falls tears through the photographs that burn and crumble to dust in his hands. Out of touch with time he swallows around a sob

and lets the space once again shift and change around him.

 

Someone nearly bumps into him on their way out the laundry room, and only narrowly misses him by blinking to the left. 

“Sorry, love, I didn’t see you there!”

He stares at her, wide eyed, certain now that the hallway has stopped shifting. 

“Are you like me?”

She blinks at him owlishly, then cocks her head and says, “Have we met? I’m Lena.”

“We might have,” he offers. “Though I do not remember much of myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I might be a ghost I think. I’m not dead,” he clarifies.

“If not that then what are you?”

“I’m just... somewhere else.”

“Now that does sounds strange,” Lena says, and holds up a finger under her chin. “When I got caught in the slipstream,” she tells him, “I was unable to maintain a physical form.” She lowers her hand and shakes her head. “But this doesn’t feel like it. You don’t look like you’re about to disappear at any moment.”

He says, “People here seem to see me briefly. Usually they have something of mine.”

“Oh!” Lena claps her hands and looks back to the laundry room. “Oh, then there must be something here that belongs to you.” 

She re-enters in a flash and holds the door open for him. He follows, uncertain, and watches with a furrowed brow as she zips around, peeking into the washing machine and peering into corners. She appears back before him suddenly with hands on her hips and says, “I don’t know. Does anything look familiar to you?”

“Not as such,” he says. “Did you bring something specific in here?”

“Oh, of course! Just a moment.”

She blinks over to the shelves and stands on her tip-toes, digging through a pile of neatly-folded clothes before pulling out a patterned blanket. A flash of time and thought on top (of a shelf inside the laundry room). “Sometimes things get mixed up the wash,” she says, unfolding it and holding it out in front of him. “It’s not one of McCree’s so maybe it’s yours?”

He frowns, tries to think if this McCree has yet come up in these not-dreams, not-quite-real world. “Would I use something like this?”

“Well I don’t know that,” she tells him. “But I’m right sure no one else would. It might have been a gift.”

A gift. A patterned blanket that is not at all his style, but then again it makes about as much sense as anything else has so far. He takes it from her hands and presses it against his cheek; the blanket is soft still, likely new, it does not appear as if it has been washed that much yet and it smells like

He presses his nose into it, inhaling deeply,

it smells a little like his shampoo, he thinks.

a little like smoke.

 

The book is tucked in-between the cushions on a couch in the rec room and it is very old.

Hana finds it while cleaning up after a streaming session, regards it quizzically for a moment before flipping through it, then sits cross-legged on the couch with the book in her lap and just stares at it.

This is not her book but it is familiar to her, like a soft scent on the edge (of a pen touched page). And yes, there is ink on pages that’s not printed but put in by someone’s hand, notes and underlined quotes in rough handwriting.

“This is your book, isn’t it?” she says to the man sitting next to her. “I remember you reading it. Or I think I remember, it is so very strange.” She cannot remember him coming in. Maybe, she thinks, she nodded off after streaming.

“This book was given to me as a gift,” says the man. He reaches for it and she lets him take it, watches as he flips through it like she did only a moment ago. Right there on the first pages, below the title, there is a note in that same handwriting: 

Hope this helps you as much as it did me

-Jesse

“Oh, I see.” Hana nods once when he shows it to her. “Of course, I remember now.”

He closes the book, fingers passing idly along its spine. Jesse’s book. His book. Hana had fallen asleep with her legs in his lap. He had been reading it and she’d fallen asleep. Hana doesn’t care for his silence.

“What about you then?” she asks. He says, “I don’t know.” He says, “Is this real? I can’t tell...”

“It’s a dream, right? But somehow I know you.” She holds up a hand in front of her face and yawns. “I guess McCree knows you too.”

“McCree?”

“Jesse.” she rolls her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

He watches her from where he sits, gives only a one-shouldered shrug in response. Hana shakes her head.

“You didn’t plan on staying, did you?”

“I believe so. Only now I’m not so sure.”

“What changed?”

“I did.”

She shakes her head again; sits up and stretches her arms high above her head. She says, “This dream is very strange.”

"Dreams,” he says. “Only I’m not so sure any longer that they are that.” There is a pattern, he explains. He dreams of people here or they dream of him; they each have something of his, a little piece of himself that he has forgotten. These dreams or memories, he says, are what remain of him here. And they connect somehow, through a certain thought or touch or taste. It is how he keeps finding his way through them.

“But where are you if you are not here?” she insists. “Where have you gone?”

Miserable and sick of repeating it, he says: “I don’t know.”

She says, “If you were here,” and looks to him intently, arms crossed over her chest, “Then your name should be in the archives. Talk to Athena if you can, or look for Winston.”

“Thank you,” he says. He does not think he can control this, whatever this is, but ah, the space around him changes with the new clues like before. If all of it should lead to something, if he should remember himself- then perhaps he must simply follow the dream-path, whichever way it takes him.

 

There is something in the darkness: hungry, hunting. He can feel it following at his heels; he runs, so fast as his legs will carry him, nearly rolling downhill tripping over the uneven terrain. It feels familiar like the fury and the fear, the deep bite of 4ams, the ache of morning ashes. He cannot remember how it began, only that in the beginning he was not nearly so frightened as he is now. This is a land of no one’s dreams

and he is lost in it.

“It’s a misprint. Shimada’s on here twice.”

There is a name at the bottom (of past month’s missions roster). A name that does not belong. Or so it seems.

“Look closer,” Jack tells them. “It says Shimada, G. But the other one says Shimada, H.”

Jesse frowns. “That don’t make much sense. We only got the one agent with that name.”

“Athena,” Winston says, adjusting his glasses on his nose. Something about this does not sit right with him. “Please pull up the file on Shimada, Genji. List known relations.” 

The AI gives a moment while she accesses her files. Then 

Shimada, Genji: Relations: Shimada, Sojiro; Shimada, Kasumi; Shimada, Hanzo; Shim-

“Wait.”

Jack picks up his rifle in the time it takes Winston to sputter in surprise. There is a man at the far end of the conference desk, arms up in defence; he looks just as confused to be there as they are to see him.

“Who are you?” Jack demands. He hasn’t the time to question the circumstances of his sudden appearance. The man says, “I don’t know.”

“Wait, I know him,” Jesse says and moves to stand in front of Jack, his metal arm pushing down the rifle from its target. Then, on the verge of alarm: “Don’t I?”

The man just stares back at Jesse. His eyes linger on the scarf around Jesse’s upper arm.

“Hanzo? You’re Hanzo right?” Then, “This is a dream.” Then, “Or like a dream? Like the last time and you told me to find you.”

“I did?” says the man – Hanzo – and looks up to meet Jesse’s gaze. “I did. You said my name.”

“Hanzo,” Jesse repeats it with bated breath. “Where are you? How do- how do I get to you?”

“It-” Hanzo looks away, starts fading away, and Jesse moves to him on instinct, tries to catch him before he’s gone. “It’s quiet- in this room.”

Jesse’s hand grasps air. Behind him, Jack says: “It’s a misprint. Shimada’s on here twice.”

 

It doesn’t look like a morning or a good one at that, with the clouds blocking out sunlight so much so it feels disorienting, like the sticky traces of a dream when first he opens his eyes and feels so terribly lonely, as if the people around him are ghosts. It looks like rain but the sky does not yet weep over the hot earth, only pushes and pulls clouds over its crown and whispers softly over the last traces of dreams.

Hanzo hates this.

He hates it and he cannot help himself but waking up inside a dream is the worst even when the skies are clear and inviting; waking up all proper in the morning becomes that much harder then and it is as if he has not slept at all. Perhaps if they were not so silent and still he would find reason to enjoy them, but in dreams like these there is no music or color, just the blank space where something that should be there is missing.

He is inside that room again and the door is locked and the windows are shut. Genji comes in despite this because locked things do not so much matter in dreams.

“Jesse tells me we now remember your name.”

Hanzo grimaces. He asks, “When?”

“When what?”

“When did he tell you this?”

Genji shrugs. He doesn’t know either.

“Maybe if we look through the photographs together.” “I don’t have any.” “What about the drawer?” “There aren’t any.” “There were plenty last time I was here.” That strange armored creature, his brother. Five years of incense smoke and ten years of regret. “That was a different dream. There aren’t any now.” “Huh.” Genji opens a drawer still. All he finds is a faded photograph outisde (of its broken glass frame). A photo of them as children. Strange, his brother. 

It doesn’t matter now anyway: Hanzo is shaking with doubt. Whatever memories he kept in photographs seem as fickle as this dream-land. What pieces of it can he trust to make any of it real? How much of that world can he truly touch? What once were faces spinning on paper rose in front of him like time-touched stone, but like growing shadows in daylight so did the thought of leaving bite deep into his heart.

Though there is the bow. And the cup. A potted plant, a patterned blanket, a book,

his brother,

Genji stands up and walks over to the window. Hanzo tells him, “You can’t open them.” “Why not?” “I tried. You just can’t.” “That’s a shame. It’s a dream, isn’t it? But the windows are always closed.” “Sometimes,” Hanzo corrects him. “Sometimes I dream outside though.” “Oh.” Genji tries the window anyway. It stays closed. He places his fingers atop the windowsill and looks to Hanzo. “Hey, so, do you remember who you are yet?”

Hanzo considers this. He’s had to stitch himself back together with a string of memories: he remembers his name now, and the little moments within the Watchpoint, this harbour where his soul could nest after years of longing; he remembers the missions and the good times and the bad times in-between; he remembers his brother and the long nights and thinking that, perhaps, he should not have come here knowing he must leave. And something else, a deep ache within his heart.

Genji asks, “Who do you think is dreaming?” “I, uh, I’m-” “Yeah?” “I do not understand.” “If it’s not my dream or yours then whose is it?” There is no sound or color, just the taste of salt and dates in his mouth, and a thousand stars on his skin in no one’s dreams. He can still hear and see, but it is as if he is looking through a fog. And he can understand very little, and he can remember very little – until the fog passes and he is himself again, if that is what he is.

“I don’t know.” Hanzo says, looking to this entirely numb thought, void of all sound and song. “But I would like to wake up soon.”

 

There is something in the darkness: hungry, hunting. He can feel it reaching out to consume him. Here’s how it happens:

it is a warm day in July, with the wind blowing from the coast to the sea. Hanzo jogs along the border of the perimeter, just off the cliffside overlooking the vast body of water. The air smells like a storm, the sharp scent of ozone and salt in the air, in his hair, on his skin: he is tuning out the cries of gulls and the crash of waves in favour of Lucio’s new arrangement.

He rather likes it.

It’s a good song

and it continues playing on loop, long after the storm has passed, long after the battery has died, and the phone remains shattered on the rock, and the earphones softly, softly relaying the tune like a final testament.

and he is gone.

Fareeha shakes her head, watching Jesse like she’s not quite sure what to make of it all.

“Shadows and visions? Do you hear yourself?” she asks. “Jesse you’re obsessed!”

“Know what I saw,” he tells her and can’t quite keep the irritation from his voice. “I ain’t making this up, Reeha. And he ain’t a shadow, more like a... a ghost or a misplaced spirit.” A wandering soul inside the twilight 

“And what does that mean?”

“Means he ain’t supposed to be like that.” Jesse clicks his lighter and chews his cigarillo but does not light it. “Means he’s lost somehow.”

She considers what he’s told her so far, shakes her head again: it all sounds far too much like a story to her, though Jesse seems convinced, 

and by account he is not the only one to have seen this- this-

“What did you say his name was?” she’s having trouble remembering.

“Hanzo,” Jesse says it like it physically pains him. He looks towards the twilight, towards the sea.

And then he smiles.

“Hanzo,” he repeats softly. Fareeha stares at him and then looks strangely to his shadow-woven companion, the bone-starlight strings pulling his lips into a smile. He might be glowing, she can’t quite say.

“I know you- I know you!” Jesse talks to the spirit like it is not at all strange. “How could I have forgotten you?”

 

It is no longer quiet in his room.

There is a soft tune in the sunrise, and a strange sort of energy in the items that helped piece him back together. But still he is alone, and still he is a ghost. Still there is something missing, a vital component that at some point became the very frame holding him together. It is in the roots creeping along the walls and the sweet scent of grass growing through the floorboards. It is in the shoji half-faded beneath the treebranches of a sakura tree in full bloom. It is on a sun-touched hill where Jesse once stood waiting for him, when Hanzo was more than an ephemeral touch of shadow and light.

He shifts on the bed that he did not sleep on, weightless on the sheets, melting and breaking in the dreamscape. He might disappear at any moment, he thinks. It is only through the force of his will that he remains half-stuck in this space, and the thought of it makes him angry and afraid. Is this what he is meant to suffer until he is forgotten again, perhaps for good? And again, is this not what he deserves?

The door does not open; Jesse simply strolls down the hill and passes into it. He does not see Hanzo until Hanzo stands, bright summer sunlight shining right through him. He must have found another thing of Hanzo’s, though his hands look empty.

“I think it’s just me,” Jesse says.

Hanzo looks up at him, half-hopeful, half-terrified. He says, “Just you?”

“Yeah,” Jesse says on an exhale. A lonely lover at the top (of a sun-touched hill). “I’m yours, darling. I wish you’d come back to me.”

And Hanzo, Hanzo can’t help himself; he rushes forward, reaching for this last glimmer of hope, steeling himself for the moment his fingers fall short of the man he loves. But he reaches and skin brushes against fabric, grasping, grabbing, pulling him close, his arms wrap firmly around Jesse’s torso and Jesse pulls him in, heavy around his shoulders but real, real, so present and here and Hanzo is holding him like he is quite (physical) and not a ghost at all.

“I’m here,” he whispers into his neck and, “I’m here,” he repeats again as if to convince himself as much as Jesse. His cheeks feel wet as he is held for the first time in a frenzied lifetime of existing and not, of recalling himself and not. Jesse sounds as elated as he feels, muffled words pressed into Hanzo’s hair: “I’m touching you, I can touch you, you’re here.” He laughs and lifts Jesse and twirls him around once. And where here is might be uncertain yet, with the hot sun high above them and breaking into the small suffocating space as if they might be both outside and not, both in the physical world and not.

Jesse laughs too until Hanzo puts him back down and then he leans in to press cheek against cheek.  
“Come back to me now,” he whispers. “Come back now, love.”

Hanzo takes a step back, nearly tripping over the treasures and trinkets littering the floor of his room. There’s the set of finely carved chopsticks he’s been looking for, and the bright green earphones impossibly tangled

and his phone with its broken glass stuck on a tune, frozen on a date that no longer exists.

“What was I,” he starts, looking around as if he’s forgotten something. Jesse shrugs unhelpfully and Genji yells at them from the hallway: “Jesse! Hanzo! Hurry up or we will be late!”

Jesse holds out his hand to Hanzo.

“Well then, shall we?”

Only for a moment, Hanzo hesitates.

Then he takes Jesse’s hand, warm and firm in his own.

**Author's Note:**

> _“Just feel your way, soul, just wander about, burrow blindly into the full bath of innocent twilight drives! I know you, scared soul, nothing is necessary to you.  
>  Nothing is so much food, drink, and sleep for you as the return to your beginnings.  
> The wave roars around you, and you are wave; the forest rustles, and you are forest. There is no more outside and inside. You fly, a bird in the air; you swim, a fish in the sea; you absorb light, and you are light; you taste darkness and are darkness.”_   
>  **Hermann Hesse, from The Complete Fairy Tales; “A Dream Sequence,”**


End file.
